Chapter 327
As the Vampire Queen closed in on my sister, Elliott, and Aaron, I watched through my boyfriend’s IAC. Brandon pulled the SUV to a screeching halt at the end of the alleyway. “Dad! Come on!” Brandon shouted through the open passenger side window. The four of them were in the SUV in a half-second, and Brandon was pulling away. I don’t know if Cadence was aware that Holland had just entered the alleyway from the other end as the SUV’s tires smoked down the road.
“What do I do?” Brandon asked me.
I could see that there was no way he could get out without running over a few Vampires. The ranks had closed in tightly, and there’d be no going around. “You have a line of Vampires in the road ahead of you. Do you see them?”
“Yeah. How do I go around?”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope. Can’t.”
“Okay….”
“Hit the gas and pray they scatter.”
“Right….”
There were at least twenty ghouls of all shapes and sizes in front of him, barring the road. I knew the SUV would take them out, but it had to be scary driving through them like that. Brandon didn’t waver, though. Elliott, Aaron, and Margie all positioned themselves so they could shoot out of the windows, which helped some, but there were still plenty of bloodsuckers in the road. Brandon pounded the pedal and flew through them. Most of the Vampires instinctively got out of the way, but one of them shattered the windshield. Another almost took out Elliott as he scrambled to get back inside.
I didn’t see where a third landed. Cadence turned her head, and I saw legs dangling down behind her. He was still on top of the SUV.
“What do I do now?” Brandon asked as Aaron went out the window to fight the older man who had now managed to pull himself back on top of the SUV.
“You drive fast,” I said.
“I know, but where am I going?”
I realized Patsy wasn’t going back the way we’d come. “Patsy, where are we going?”
“Secret bunker,” she replied. “We emptied the headquarters building. It’s too vulnerable to an attack. Holland doesn’t even know where this place is. Becky and Paul are already there.”
“Okay—can you give Brandon access to your IAC so he can follow you?”
“Sure,” she said as she turned off on a dirt road.
“Brandon, ask Patsy for visuals. She’ll lead you to the secret bunker.”
“Secret bunker?”
“Yep. We’ll all be safer there.”
“All right. But I guess I better go back for Aaron first….”
I hadn’t been paying attention to what was happening with the Vampire on top of the SUV since I’d been trying to coordinate between Patsy and Brandon, but I watched as my boyfriend flung the vehicle into reverse and passed back under an overpass. I didn’t see the Vampire anywhere, so I assumed it had met its demise somewhere along the way. However, behind Aaron, I could see the fog rolling in. Holland hadn’t given up, not yet. I was glad when the Guardian Leader got back in the SUV, and Brandon took off again, following Patsy’s IAC video of how to get to the secret bunker. I decided now would be a really good time to block anything Holland might be doing to try to figure out where I was, so I put all of my mental effort into making sure she couldn’t follow us.
A few minutes later, I saw what looked like a metal door carved into a mountainside in front of us. Patsy pulled the vehicle to a stop on top of some sort of a metal platform. “Hold on,” she said, and a few seconds later, the SUV began to sink, and I realized we were going underground. It would’ve been really cool if I wasn’t concerned about the people in the car with me. This was the first time I’d been able to pay much attention to them. I slid out, ready to help, but Tanner was around the vehicle in a second, so I stepped out of his way as Derrick helped hand Stephanie out to him.
I wanted to be useful in some way, so I waited until Derrick was out and then put the seat down so that Jamie could more easily get Grant out of the way-back. I could tell Jamie was tired already from the work he’d done to stop Grant’s leg from bleeding. Other people were coming out to help as well, but when Grant went to step out of the SUV, I let him use my shoulder to lean on. “Thanks, kid,” he said in a gruff voice, and part of me wanted to correct him, to let him know I was an adult, but Becky hurried over to help him, and I turned back to Jamie.
“He’s a man of few words,” he whispered, shaking his head. He had blood all over his pants, and his hands were stained as well, but I knew it wasn’t his.
“Do you need any help?” I asked him.
“I’m fine. For now. Thanks. Going to go get some morphine started for those guys and check on Paul.”
“All right,” I said, shutting the SUV door, though I figured it would need to be washed out. Someone would have to move it, too, so Brandon could get in. I saw some people who looked like technicians coming over as I followed Jamie through what appeared to be a silver infused steel door.
We took a narrow passage to the main part of the new headquarters. The bunker wasn’t big at all. I saw the other entry and noticed the door was similar. It would be nearly impossible for Holland to get through there. An operating room and what looked like a break room were right behind that front entryway with the door that led to the passage and the garage. There was also a closet about the size of my bedroom at home that held all of the supplies and equipment Becky had evacuated from the other building. I knew that Holland had sent in forces there, but they hadn’t found anything of use as Becky’d managed to get her team out in time. She would make a good leader if she had more confidence in her ability to speak.
I could see Jamie had all the help he needed. Paul was out, so I couldn’t say hello to my cousin, but that was just as well since he was likely still in unbelievable pain and shock, so I did the one thing I thought might be useful and planted myself in a chair in front of the door, making sure Holland wasn’t anywhere nearby. I also blocked her signal to the trackers, thinking Christian would want that data again, if Aaron even had the time to send it to him.
